Pandora

I am trying hard to let go of work for a few days and relax my mind. Today I’ve been playing on-line Scrabble (very much against the advice of my chiropractor who says I should be on the computer as little as possible lest I turn into a hobbly hunched old woman). As I play I’ve been listening to the wonderful on-line radio station Pandora, which plays – well, it plays whatever you please. And it never, ever has commercials. And it tells the name of the musician or group and the name of the piece. Oh, heaven. I was turned on to this by my clever son when I was whining once again about commercial radio and how all the stations sound alike. You create your own radio station specifying the name of an artist or song. Or you can choose from a variety of genres. Lately I have been listening to the holiday channels “Peaceful Christmas,” “Folk Christmas,” and “Traditional Christmas.” I have also created a few channels including “Joni Mitchell Radio” and “Bob Dylan Radio.” Songs that match the key words are played, not necessarily always the artist him or herself. You can also give feedback, e.g. “I don't like this song. It's not what this station should play,” or “I'm tired of this song, don't play it for a month,” or “Why is this song playing?” and it is all taken into account the next time you log on. Pandora is provided as part of the Music Genome Project, which collects information on the taxonomy of music and analyzes it based on 400 musical characteristics, then adds to this information over time. Oh, sometimes the Internet and computers are marvelous things...